Australian Solar Panels Manufacturer Uses ICO, Crypto Tokens for P2P Energy Trading

Power Ledger, an Australian renewable energy company expects the Blockchain to improve efficiency in the market by enabling peer to peer trading, to make solar panels cheaper.

Now it is seeking support through the pre-sale of POWR tokens. 

The ultimate aim of the POWR token is to enable peer to peer energy trading.

Blockchain is becoming a hot topic in the power industry today. For example, Austrian and German energy provider Switch has recently begun accepting Bitcoin for gas and electricity bill payments.

Energy trading

Excess electricity generated by individuals (say through a solar panel on the rooftop) may be sold to other individuals who need them.

By cutting out the middleman in power trading, costs are expected to come down. This may result in more people installing solar power panels and using renewable sources of energy. Ultimately higher demand could result in economies of scale for solar panel manufacturers and costs may come down.

A virtuous cycle could be initiated, where lower prices fuel further demand.

Business model

Unlike other ICOs where the developers have nothing but a white paper backing them and yet manage to raise millions of dollars in a matter of minutes, the ICO of Power Ledger is backed by an established business model.

The energy trading platform built by Power Ledger is fully commercially deployed and supported by multiple energy providers (including Vector NZ, Western Power WA).

The company will utilize funds raised to continue its expansion into various other markets, including India and other emerging markets.

Anti-whale provisions

The pre-sale of POWR tokens does not have a minimum subscription size, but has a spending cap of $25K per subscriber.

This provision is to ensure that the presale is not dominated by a few whales and enjoys broad-based support.

Power Ledger expects this support to give stability to the value of POWR tokens. Multiple tokens have been subject to market manipulation, with whales resorting to pump and dump schemes, leading to small individual investors getting disillusioned. The company is currently selling 100 mln tokens at a fixed price of $ 8.8c in its presale. The company will sell 160 mln POWR tokens in an unrestricted ICO in September, which will determine the final price of POWR tokens.

ICO gaining support

As per a Bloomberg report, the pre-sale was 57 percent subscribed since opening on Sunday.

This indicates that subscribers had paid around $5 mln to obtain POWR tokens. If the pre-sale is completed successfully, the company will have raised ~ $9 mln of funds.

If the price discovery at the ICO is in line with the fixed price at which the presale tokens were sold ($ 8.8c), the total money raised by the company could be $30 mln. Considering the amount of money raised by other ICOs with only a concept backing them, this should not be a tough call.

If demand during the ICO is high, the total money raised by the company could reach $100 mln.